A Blockchain based Data Production

Traceability System

Research Project 2

Sandino Moeniralam

Wednesday February 28, 2018

University of Amsterdam

Introduction

• Need for data lineage

• Copernicus EO Sentinel-2 mission

• Blockchain based

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Problem statement

• Reproducibility crisis

• Ideal situation

• Copernicus EO missions largest in history

• Version Control System insufficient

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Reproducibility crisis

Figure 1: 1,500 scientists lift the lid on reproducibility

Source: https://www.nature.com/news/1-500-scientists-lift-the-lid-on-reproducibility-1.19970 3/18

Related Work

Technologies

1. BigchainDB

2. Ethereum

Implementations

1. Provenance

2. Quality Assurance for Essential Climate Variables (QA4ECV)

3. VCS-Blockchain

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Research questions

What requirements should a Blockchain based production

traceability system for satellite data adhere to?

• What does the data production process of Sentinel-2 Copernicus’s

Earth Observation data look like?

• What types of data are to be distinguished?

• How does one capture all the steps of the data production process?

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Data Lineage and Data Provenance

• Difference data lineage data provenance

• Several layers of abstraction

• Different views

• Open source provenance capture applications

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Copernicus Sentinel-2 EO missions

• World’s largest single earth observation program

• Sentinel 1-7 planned

• 30 satellites in total

• Different companies involved including Airbus, EUMETSAT, SpaceX

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Types of data

• The datasets themselves

• The production environment

• Entire OS with applications

• Python virtual environment

• The production process

• Human view: comments, explanation

• Machine view: automatic scripts

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Satellite Data Processing Levels

• No strict definitions

• Level 0, 1A, 1B, 1C, 2A, 2B, 3A, 3B and 4

• Published from level 1C onwards

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Blockchain

Advantages

• Immutable

• Distributed

• Secure

• Open

Disadvantages

• Scalability issues

• Computationally expensive

Figure 2: Distributed ledger

Source: https://elearningindustry.com/bitcoin-

blockchain-impacting-elearning-industry

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Bitcoin, Ethereum, BigchainDB

Figure 3: Abstract overview of a Blockchain

Source: https://medium.com/@lhartikk/a-blockchain-in-200-lines-of-code-963cc1cc0e54

Data

• Bitcoin: transactions

• Ethereum: scripts

• BigchainDB: storage

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Quality Assurance For Essential Climate Variables project

Figure 4: Provenance Traceability Chain

Source: http://www.qa4ecv.eu12/18

Proposed design

Blockchain data

• Cryptographic hash of the previous block

• Timestamp

• Proof-of-work

Data

• Hash(dataset)

• Pointer to dataset

• Hash(production environment)

• Pointer to production environment

• Hash(production process)

• Pointer to the production process

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Schematic sketch

Table 1: A schematic sketch

Block 0 Block 1 Block 2

hash(0) hash(Block 0) hash(Block 1)

timestamp timestamp timestamp

proof-of-work proof-of-work proof-of-work

hash(dataset V1) hash(dataset V2) hash(dataset V3)

pointer to dataset V1 pointer to dataset V2 pointer to dataset V3

hash(PE #1) hash(PE #2) hash(PE #3)

pointer to PE #1 pointer to PE #2 pointer to PE #3

hash(PP #1) hash(PP #2) hash(PP #3)

pointer to the PP #1 pointer to the PP #2 pointer to the PP #3

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Discussion

• Volatile nature of digital data

• Production Environment large size

• Production Process complex

• Blockchain based

• Actual storage of the data unresolved

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Conclusion

What requirements should a Blockchain based production

traceability system for satellite data adhere to?

Every block should include the datasets, production environment and the

production process for humans and machines.

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Future Work

• More technical analysis into different Production Environments

• Ethereum Virtual Machine compatible

• Scalability issue

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Questions?

Questions?

Sandino Moeniralam

sandino.moeniralam@os3.nl

”It’s not broken, it’s a feature...”

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